Sunday, June 29, 2008

Part two of Piratey Goodness is finally out, me scallywags. Here be the boots I labored long and hard over, enjoy 'em ye lime suckin' brigands!

Avast, check these out! These are simple, calf high yummy turned down cuff boots that look comfortable and stylish. They come with or without bootstraps, which were actually invented to help hold down the area around the top of the ankle, which had to be sewn loose in order to let the foot slide in and accommodate it. So instead of being all loose about the ankle, you could strap 'em in to make sure they wouldn't slide off lest ye find yourself overboard. These actually weren't that troublesome. A couple of tweaks for fit and to get the right look and I was set and happy. It was these that drove me madder than a hatter.

I won't ever belittle a perfect knee joint seam. Aiyeeeeeee!! Texture after texture, try after try, I simply couldn't get where the two sculpts at thigh and lower leg met up to look like a solid piece. Finally, after sculpt after sculpt and hundreds of lindens in upload fees, I managed it. Every now and then as you move it can still be seen, but from most stationary poses that don't twist the legs horribly they're fine. And dayem, they're sexy, and much more shape hugging than the old boots. Yes, despite how smoking hot they look on a woman they look fine on men, haha. Both of these boot sets are available in four different cuff styles, and three different heel heights, so you definitely have your options! You're pretty much building your own pair of boots to your own specifications.

In the original Piratey Goodness line I had a pair of matching gloves, and with this remake I took that a bit farther, and made gloves that matched the different cuff styles!

Plus, an added bonus or maybe just trivia, I actually made the glove texture for this this time and I'm proud, because of how difficult clothing textures are for me.

Wait a second... Wow, what's that hat in that picture? That looks really good...

MUAHAHA!!! Cap'n Jack is back. The wonderfully weather worn, beat up, eaten by a leviathan and spit back up again, lost at the bottom of the sea and resurfaced hat that can go through anything went through a remake as well. I even made the sculpt especially thin and crinkly and asymmetrical to portray the beat-up and utterly miserable feel of a hat that's been through it all. This time, it's texture changing to a dark weather worn leather (shown), a warmer brown tone, white/silvery gray and a nice roughed up black.

If you weren't so distracted by the hat in the gloves picture, you might have noticed a belt as well

Yes! A new arrival that wasn't in the original collection! It was requested quite a bit though, and before I had made an extremely simple belt that I couldn't bear to sell. This one, however, I pulled out all of the stops with. It includes a detailed flintlock pistol, a pair of dueling daggers, and a frog. No, not the amphibian, it's a leather belt doohicky used to hold one's rapier. I didn't include a rapier as I figured people would want to use their own, and it certainly doesn't appear lacking without it. Personally, I've been using Laces and Steel's "Saviolo" rapier, and it looks perfect. But for those who'd rather have the simpler things in life, I made a version of this belt without so many doohickies, that simply has the frog and a ring and is without the daggers and pistol. But for those who think that more is more, I made an "add-on" pack that includes the pouch, compass, and spyglass that you see pictured. It also has a copy of the pistol in brass and in silver so you can carry it without having to pull it off of the belt!

Yes, I'm a wicked, wicked woman who's after your lindens. I offer you this last parting shot.

If you feel yourself getting a stomach cramp, pop this on your head and strut about. On second thought, maybe not, you don't want to be sent to Elba! This has the same color change cockade as the Chapeau de Bras, and comes from an earlier period. This one is based off of a bicorn that Napoleon himself wore, hence the name.

This was obviously the bulk of my work, but depending on how my whim moves me, there might be a Piratey Goodness part trois, which will/would include even more hats.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Or you certainly will be after seeing part one of the glorious, illustrious return of Piratey Goodness. This is the first installment, the boots are much closer to release and I also have a couple of hats that are almost ready, but mostly I figured they wouldn't all fit well into a blog entry.

Firstly, the open sea is a dangerous place. It's full of fish that want to eat you and mean people who want yer precious cargo, and accidents happen. Rather than show your icky scars to the world and your crew, hide them with a practical and comfortable eyepatch.

It's completely sculpted for the best fit, but does not sadly go around the whole of the head. I had trouble fitting a whole looped band, but you should be fine if you're not bald. I offered the option on this one for it to cover either your left eye or your right, depending on how your hair falls, and you can also get it fit for a male or female face.

Next up, fabulous hats:

I wanted something more refined for my Captain's Hat in the remake, something with a bit more class. The other one was certainly full of swagger but I really wanted delicate maribou or ostrich feathers along the edges of it, and I achieved the effect the best I could. I'm especially proud of the lack of alpha flicker, and it happens to change texture on touch like the other hats. But if you miss the swagger and attitude of having an enormous hat full of a waterfall of feathers, have no fear.

The Bard's Hat is an homage to the original Captain's hat, but this time much more sim friendly (less than a third of the prims used in the first), and this one also has absolutely no alpha flicker! Except sometimes with hair in the back. But it has a lovely fall to it, and nice fluffly feathers, it's quite rakish and debonair.

Speaking of debonair, I decided to push my chosen period a bit, and wander away from the 18th century a bit into the 19th with a visit to the Napoleonic.

A chapeau de bras simply translated means "hat of the arm". No, you don't wear the hat on your arm, it was actually a military adaptation of a more classic bicorn that was able to be folded underneath your arm for travel and for military ceremony. The two folds at the top were normally pinned together, and as decoration there used to be a sort of floret pin called a "cockade". The cockade could be used to show the colors of your house/heraldry, or the colors of your country, or maybe the colors of your political party. The cockade on this hat is scripted to change color to combinations of black and another color, because black really goes with everything!

As per usual, everything has a demo available in the store :) Stay tuned for part deux!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I moved my build spot! Not big news, I know, but it has never moved in the entire time I've lived on this island. Not even a couple of meters to the left. It's now at the hobbit hole, behind the waterfall, and my former build spot has a couple of hammocks set up to be a peaceful sitting area.

I completely scrapped the apartment castle thing completely. It just wasn't working and I was really unhappy with the look of it. I want something that feels a bit more natural and moves better with the land. Also, I really just love enormous trees. So, I stole Jen Shikami's idea a bit, and made an absolutely huge base of a tree in the northwest corner, and I think I'll try making castle towers with rope bridges slung across. That's the general idea anyway.

I'm starting to get to the point where I just want to release everything, sans boots, and give up on making it all one release. They're just throwing me down for the count and even now, where I'm reasonably happy with them there's still something off.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Alright, so I've been slipping. So the gung ho, driving force of my creativity ground a bit down through distraction and earthly delights. It was my birthday on Tuesday so I've been enjoying some laze about time to celebrate, as well as delicious left overs from the lovely dinner.

But this has also been a working vacation, the boots have been driving me bonkers! And as soon as I think I have a handle on the scope of them, Kriket or Selos tell me they want this type of boot cuff or that this or that could be tweaked better... and of course they're always infuriatingly right -.-

So the boots are holding things up, right now there are four different cuff designs, two heel heights, two shoe styles and then knee highs vs. thigh highs. The thigh highs, I'm convinced, aren't called devilish sinful boots because they're sexy... oh no. They're called that because they are evil.

I'm going to retreat from spending more hundreds of lindens in uploads of texture tries and sort my inv... o.o

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

He's cool, he's suave, he's romantic. Oh, and I also remade the Phantom of the Opera mask. The dashing Armando is modeling this new improved version, which is based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber version. The original vision of the author (Gaston Lereux) was actually a hideous and macabre vision of a skull and a very scary zombie man. Hardly the yummy hunk of man that is my male alt. But Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted there to be more romantic tension and he wanted to have a male star in his musical that women could fawn over and fill the seats with, and so he changed it to a handsome young stud and removed half of the macabre mask so that people could see the sexy better. It also was an aid to the narrative, as you could now see the actor's expressions and read his feelings better. This is the mask that has become synonymous with the Phantom.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Please pardon my dust as I fiddle and foodle and putter about the island. My masks weren't the only things that had gotten outdated in a year, and I was starting to find my surroundings in the landscaping of the island increasingly inferior. I just never bothered to improve it because it wasn't a priority, but today I found motivation and inspiration through Miriel Enfield's amazing and beautiful sculpted cliffs. They really add a whole new look and feel to terraforming in SL and I think she'll get a kick out of just how crazy I've gone with them.

I completely leveled the mountain by the event hall. I felt it was limiting my use of space, and had long outlived its original purpose as a divider between the two halves of the island. I liked the dynamic of having a mountain though, so I shifted it back into the south west corner. I played with the idea of getting rid of the waterfall, because I was rather unsatisfied with my old one, but I realized I liked it and the sound and the feel too much. So why don't I just redo it? With the new mega prims that were recently able to be made, plus a bit of creative sculpting, I made a waterfall especially sculpted to the land, falling through it like real water.

Kriket was the one who suggested I dress up the bridge a bit, or more like she did so by dropping on she had designed on me. It was extremely primmy (89!) but I loved the look and design, so I added sculpted elements to bring it down to less than half that. It makes a beautiful little piece of the landscape now.

I showered a lot of the land with trees, mostly Sculptomancy's wonderful two prim texture changing trees (I adore them). Here's a snapshot that shows Miriel's cliffs a little.

Just beautiful.

I'm still not done yet, but I'm calling it done for now :) It's definitely worth visiting and taking a peek when you get a chance.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Most of these are things are little favors or scraps that I made for friends or myself at some random point, or that you might have seen around the island, like the lillies!

Enough people have asked me about those, to buy or for me to put them out, so I figured the lucky chair might be a good spot to put them :) I also had too many male/female items in the old lucky chair, so that if a guy got the fur stole or the Audrey Hat it wasn't too thrilling. I've avoided this as best I could be using only unisex items!

These I made from sculpts I created for my skull, which is still a work in progress, just abandoned for the moment. But in the meantime, you can nibble on necks or nom on a mouse.

When I made my punky ears I made the little safety pins, and someone asked in Fashion Emergency about plain safety pin earrings. I realized that I had them pretty much made, so I passed them to the person who had asked. They languished in my inventory for a while before I realized they're perfect for the chair!

Another Fashion Emergency call, I think it was Voshie Paine who asked about floppy bunny ears. Apparently, ones that lay just along the head are few and far between, and I offered to make her a pair since it wouldn't take too long. Again, they languished in my inventory after I had passed them to her. Yet here they get to see the daylight once more!

And the last one, which is my favorite:

This is a set of four masks, both the Columbina and Civetta shapes with a male and female version for each. When I set out masks I prefer to have a new and original shape, this is just a retexture. But it's a really cool retexture which is why it's in here :D

There may be more items to come as I clean out my inventory, so don't feel sad if there's nothing you like here. I'm working on it ♥

Saturday, June 7, 2008

I've been working very hard on pirate stuff lately, and realized it's taking longer than I'd like. So I remembered that there was a small quick project I could release pretty quickly to keep you guys happy and updated, which was touching up the voltos!

I retired the old Volto Maschio, because the shape was frankly inferior in fit and look to the female version. This new one fits much better on a typical male face (large head, large brow, smaller eyes, prominent nose), and also has those pronounced masculine features. It's more clearly a haunting male face rather than a weird pouty one. Plus, he looks like The Crow!

I also redid the textures on them a little, the older ones had a very flat, matte finish that was pretty plain and washed out. So I did a slightly glossier one that I feel has more definition.

The pirate stuff is coming along nicely, I completed a really fun eyepatch today and I'm thinking I might do some sort of pirate belt as well, which is something the original Piratey Goodness line was missing. You can be pretty sure that this stuff is worth the wait ;)

I'd also like to make it more official, and say welcome to two stores in one, []TRAP[] and .::.Penumbra.::.. They're owned by two of my best friends, Selos Dae and Kriket Pimpernel. Today I built them a store building that they will be sharing, that's adjacent to my own and fits their rather distinctive styles. Penumbra, owned by Kriket, has beautifully made and painstakingly sculpted jrock, anime and neko hair styles. However, since she only started her store last month, her selection is still pretty small, but give her time! Selos, who I've mentioned a few times before makes beautifully soft, hand drawn skins that have stylized makeups and vibrant rich colors, in makeup and in skin tones.Their store can be found to the right of mine, just follow the path :)

Here's a sample of their work, and mine too, haha! Here's that eyepatch:Skin: Custom tattoos and makeup by Selos (TRAP) (which I love and adore and can't use in any of my vendor photos, because I'll make people jealous ;)Hair: "Hiroto" by Kriket Pimpernel (Penumbra) in deep black

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Phew! Wow...

Ok, so I've been working on the apartment castle, trying to mix things up a bit and make it more interesting, and just reached a nasty rut. The indomitable Miriel Enfield helped me out without even realizing it, because that lovely lady has been slaving over the perfect thing... sculpted cliffs. And since they're made by Miriel, they're gorgeous. I love them... now I just need to figure out how to use them to my best advantage. It got me out of my rut a little bit, but I still needed to let that damn castle take a break while I went to other things. I took a day long break and played Guild Wars, which was really refreshing and gave me the oomph I wanted to work today. And today I was able to pick up the pirate boots again. I made a whole lot of progress, I've finished the sculpted shapes for the shoes themselves and I managed to make the texture satisfactory, especially on the high heeled version. And ohhh my, I did a little additional detail that is absolutely delicious. I did boot straps!! And they rock! They do they do. They're hella sassy.

I've also finished a couple of pirate hats, I've just been waiting on releasing them until I have a few others to join them, maybe even put them out with the boots. Oh! And I finished the Volto Maschio remake, I just need to take pictures for them and get them out. The fit is vastly superior to the old one, as is the shape. It definitely has a more masculine feel. I touched up the texture just a little, made the shading more silky rather than matte so when I put out that one, I'll be quietly upgrading the female ones as well. That one I'll hopefully have done tomorrow.

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